It’s estimated that a third of people in the UK own a coffee pod machine, which shows the need for an environmentally-friendly solution to the pods which have to date been quite tricky to recycle. Both the metal encapsulation and the coffee grounds inside can be reused, if they can be saved from being put in the bin.
Since March 2018, Waitrose has stocked The Eden Project’s home compostable coffee pods, and is now the first major retailer to sell own-label home compostable coffee pods when it started to offer them in December last year. This is part of the supermarket fulfilling its commitment to own-label packaging being widely recyclable, reusable or home compostable by 2025. The four new Waitrose 1 coffee capsules are compatible with Nespresso machines and are all are Fairtrade certified. They are sold in cardboard packaging, which is widely recyclable. The coffee varieties will be from Colombia, Brazil, Peru (decaffeinated) with an Italian-style espresso.
Polly Astbury, coffee buyer at Waitrose, comments on the progress, saying, “Our customers love coffee and worry about the waste pods can create. By being the first supermarket to launch its own home compostable coffee pods we’re really happy to be able to offer a solution. We’re committed to finding environmentally-friendly packaging alternatives and are excited by this next step.”